Longreads

September 8, 2005 12:00 AM ET Photograph by Martin Schoeller for RollingStone.com Jack White pulls his black Ford pickup truck to the curb on a quiet, tree-lined street in his native Detroit and hits…

Published in the May 1972 issue of Esquire I have to begin with a few words about androgyny. In grammar school, in the fifth and sixth grades, we were all tyrannized by a rigid set of rules that…

by Eric Fair I enter my name into a search engine. There are 3,700 results. The word torture appears in most of them. I read the blogs. I read the comments that follow. I find more blogs. I pretend…

My father at twenty, a kind face that became something else at home. REPROBATEMy father did a lot of shift work at the plant, on his feet, got heavy and angry, and enjoyed life to the smallest extent…

I asked my 105 interviewees, What is the most racist thing that has ever happened to you? The response I received most often was indicative of modern racism: The answer is unknowable. "I imagine it'd be a thing I don't even know ever happened," Aaron McGruder said. "It would be that opportunity that never manifested and I'll never know that it was even possible." A decision is made in a back room or a high-level office, perhaps by someone you'll never see, about whether or not you get a job or a home loan or admission to a school. Or perhaps you'll never be allowed to know that a home in a certain area or a job is available. This is how modern institutional racism functions and it can weigh on and shape a black person differently than the more overt, simplistic racism of the past did.

(Not single-page) Nothing irritated phone company executives more than the use of the word "hello" in initial telephone conversation. In 1910, Bell's Telephone Engineer magazine sponsored a contest for the best essay on proper telephone etiquette. AT&T had the prize article distributed to telephone directories. Here's what it said about the h-word: "Would you rush into an office or up to the door of a residence and blurt out 'Hello! Hello! Who am I talking to?' No, one should open conversations with phrases such as 'Mr. Wood, of Curtis and Sons, wishes to talk with Mr. White...' without any unnecessary and undignified 'Hellos." No aspect of telephone use escaped the interest of AT&T's etiquette police. "Speak directly into the mouthpiece," explained a California franchise's instruction manual, "keeping mustache out of the opening."

At any rate, while I didn’t fear for Charles’s life the way I would have just fifteen years earlier, I still feared for his happiness. Would he find someone who could love him, someone who wouldn’t be afraid? Implicit there was the addendum: afraid like I am. Charles was familiar with these fears; he’d made it clear, years earlier, that he was terrified of sleeping with HIV-positive guys. Now that he was positive, he was plagued with the question of finding love. Who would take him if he wouldn’t take himself?

(Fiction) There he stood at the stone gateway of the Harounis’ weekend home above Islamabad, a small bowlegged man with a lopsided, battered face. When the American wife’s car drove up, turning off the Murree road, Rezak saluted, eyes straight ahead, not looking at her. She sat in the back and smiled at him from the milky darkness of the car’s interior. What a funny little man! Once, he had happened to be walking past as she was driven through the gate, and she had waved. In the few weeks since, he had waited hours to receive this recognition from her, Friday when the family came, Sunday when they left. He had plenty of time.

Wherever you look in Killeen, chances are that these images are what you'll see. …